


Peace

by acrosspontneuf (FangedAngel)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Post-Trespasser, Spies & Secret Agents, Tevinter Imperium (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:14:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22850791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FangedAngel/pseuds/acrosspontneuf
Summary: After the Inquisition, two survivors meet.
Relationships: Fenris/Female Lavellan
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30





	Peace

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a patreon reward for the amazing [princessbatteringram](https://princessbatteringram.tumblr.com) featuring her amazing Firiel. Lots of random and vague freestyling of events on my part. set post-trespasser (in a Solas-is-Firi’s-ex context) and on the outskirts of tevinter. content warning for mentions of Fenris’ past (including the fog warriors).

Before their blood stained his hands, the Fog Warriors told him 'you're a survivor. you'll always be able to recognise other survivors in your wanderings. You will look at them and see them for who they are.' Fenris doesn't remember the specificity of their voices, but he remembers the words. He remembers the deaths.

Firiel is a survivor. Fenris could see it on her the moment he met her, and the scepticism he’d felt about the Inquisitor until then started to fade. In the uncertain days following the disbanding of the Inquisition, Fenris had joined a group of agents stationed on the outskirts of Tevinter and still reporting to the former spymaster. The former Inquisitor herself had announced her upcoming arrival in a hastily-written note and Fenris hadn’t understood why she was getting directly involved until that first time he saw her. She needs to fight and it’s written all over her. In the months following her arrival, Fenris learns more about her from observations and whispers, but barely interacts with her directly. They’re all split into different teams with different tasks, but Fenris always looks for her upon returning to base.

Firiel’s dominant hand, the left, is gone, and the loss has left rage written along her skin, tangled with betrayal. Fenris doesn’t ask her what happened until she tells him, when they’re returning from a supply run in the chill of the late afternoon. The words spill from her and Fenris wants to catch them and destroy the pain in them and that’s when he realises. He looks at her, at the fire and steel in her eyes, and he can feel colour rise in his cheeks. Firiel notices his gaze and her words falter, then soften, then cease. The dying sun tangles itself around her hair and makes it shine like molten copper. Fenris feels too many feelings at once but shame is what rises like bile. He shouldn’t even look at her. He shouldn’t keep wanting like he’s allowed to want. Kirkwall should have taught him better.

Firiel reaches her hand towards Fenris and waits for him to look at her again before she lets her fingers touch his face. The shock of contact and warmth renders him speechless and all he can do is stare at her as the sun sets around them.

*

Fenris acts like a fool around Firiel after that evening. He sticks to the shadows and watches her from corners, his heart racing at the sound of her voice, at the sight of her. She trains late at night and the way she dances around her target is flawless, like she’s always been used to fighting one-handed. Fenris has learned from all the whispers that it’s taken her months of constant practice and sheer stubbornness, but he can’t tell from the surety of her movements. She is a fiercely smart fighter, light-footed, instinctively anticipating where movement will happen. She is an elegant warrior, a sight to behold, and Fenris admires the way her blade always strikes true. He knows that he should stop watching her like a stunned child every time she walks by, but despite his strength of will in everything else he is unable to stop himself. At times, when he seeks her out, he meets her gaze. It is the only time he ever sees her flustered.

When Firiel talks to him, he finds himself out of breath, unable to control the restless movement of his hands. He notices that they are unable to look directly at each other when standing in front of each other, and it’s silly, it’s ridiculous, it’s not behaviour Fenris ever allows himself. He should be focused on the missions, on bringing down slavers, but what he relishes most is coming back and seeing her.

Neither of them sleeps well. Fenris finds Firiel hunched over a desk one night, furiously scribbling over words she has written like they are guilty of crimes. She looks up at him when he crosses the doorstep and the candlelight shows him the anger on her face.

Firiel flexes her hand, over and over, the discarded quill dripping ink over the half-written letter. ‘I just can’t get used to writing like this. My hand keeps cramping,’ she says, and Fenris takes her hand in his before he is aware of it. He rubs circles over her palm without daring to look at her until her hand relaxes, until she slips her fingers around his and holds his hand in turn. Fenris forgets how to think and lifts their entwined hands to his mouth, lets his lips linger on her skin like he has a right to the action. The desk is between them but Fenris is overwhelmed by the closeness anyway, and then she stands and walks right to him and he can’t stop himself from looking at her. He can’t hide from her, not now. Firiel looks at him like she can see him the way he sees her and it makes him feel brave. When she kisses him, he lets himself fall.

*

The operations cease for a few weeks and the keep empties, but Firi and Fenris stay behind with only the sound of the wind to accompany them. Fenris finds the routine sweet and heady like wine even as he feels fully unworthy of it. He wakes up tangled around her, holding on to her like she’s one of those rare beautiful dreams he sometimes has. They walk together for hours and she laughs as she tells him stories, of her family, of her adoptive clan, of her time with the Inquisition. They hunt and gather supplies and Firi listens to Fenris when he speaks. He’s always known that she knows more about him from the spymaster than he’d like, but now he offers her the information and ignores the fear that causes tremors in his hands. She holds him when the horrors of the past twist the expression on his face, when the rage inside him starts taking its toll on him. She keeps looking at him like he is worthy of her and he doesn’t understand why but he holds her back, holds her like she’s about to disappear.

When the darkness of her past clings to Firi, Fenris takes her to watch the sun rise, bathing the entire landscape in hues that are not as beautiful as her. He kisses oaths all over her skin and brushes her hair with his fingers and hides his face in the crook of her neck when she smiles at him. Fenris tells her about the friends he made in Kirkwall, the ones she hasn’t met, and asks her to look over the letters he writes them. He’s still nervous when he reads, but he reads to her anyway, and she kisses him when he pauses so he does it more often than he needs.

At night he traces the map of her with his fingers and listens to the changes in her breathing and loses himself in her, over and over and over. She holds him as he falls asleep and he feels the weighty layers of his past fall from his shoulders. 

Fenris knows that this can’t last, knows that they will have to go into battle once more, knows that they will always be caught up in a war, but he has found life here, he has found peace here. For now, this is all that needs to be.


End file.
